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NEIGHBOURS 



BY HERBERT KAUFMAN 

Neighbours 

Do Something! Be Something! 

The Efficient Age 

The Clock That Had No Hands 

Poems 



GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



NEIGHBOURS 



By HERBERT KAUFMAN 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






Copyright, 1909, 
By associated SUNDAY MAGAZINES 

Copyright, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914, 
By HERBERT KAUFMAN 

Copyright, 1911, 1912, 
By currier PUBLISHING COMPANY 

Copyright, 1912, 1913, 
By WOMAN'S WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY 



Copyright, 1915, 
By GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
into FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 



^'>V/- 



APR 19 1915 

©C!,A397642 



To My 

Best Neighbour — 

MY FATHER 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Man Who Sneered at Santa Claus i i 

"Maggie" 21 

The Household Bully 29 

Once Upon a Time ........ 35 

His Father Owned the Candy Shop . . 41 

How Mary Went Wrong 47 

Lest You Forget Too Long! 53 

The Passing of the Fairy Tale ... 59 

Is Your Name Scrooge? 65 

A Fair Man 7i 

Tommy's Mother and the Needle Gate 79 

Anybody Can Be a Gentleman .... 85 

The Windows of Hope and Memory . . 91 

Who Threw the Brick? 97 

The Five-cent Dollar i03 

Somebody's Daughter i09 

7 



CONTENTS 

PAGB 

To A Poor Boy 115 

The Little Brothers of Destruction . 121 

Esau, the Beggarman 127 

Johnnie 135 

NOT AN Ode tq Spring 141 



s 



THE MAN WHO SNEERED 
AT SANTA CLAUS 



THE MAN WHO SNEERED AT 
SANTA CLAUS 

YOU'RE the man who drove the 
fairies out of their dells; the 
gnomes hide as you enter the 
woods; the squirrels won't talk to you; 
you don't understand what the wind says 
at night; and you can't even see the face 
of the man in the moon. 

You weren't content to have the but- 
terflies flutter past in the sunlight; you 
caught them to feel the spangles on their 
wings, and the moment you touched the 
gauze all the purple and the gold rubbed 
off and they died in your hands. 

You set a snare for the rainbow and 
after you'd trapped it in your prism it 
stopped being a rainbow and just turned 
into a haze of coloured lights. 

Oh, the fortunes and fortunes you've 
lost — all your dreams — all your faiths! 
You've sold your birthrights. And now 
II 



NEIGHBOURS 

you're alone and miles and miles and 
miles away from home! 

You set forth in the wrong direction 
through the Gate of Years — down the 
Path of Tears. Why, already there's 
grey in your hair; so how can you know 
about Santa Claus? 

You went hunting for him, just as you 
searched for the pixies and elves and of 
course you couldn't find him because 
Doubt blurred your eyes. Your name is 
on his blacklist. He never stops at your 
chimney. 

At which you probably shrug your 
shoulders and sniff and sneer and want 
us to think that he doesn't exist. But 

Way down in your heart (in a little 
lonesome corner which belonged to a for- 
lorn boy who got lost inside of you) you 
know that Christmas is real, that there is 
2l Santa Claus, and that he rides over all 
the world in a single night — in a wonder- 
ful sleigh that simply can't be emptied, no 
matter how many guns and drums and 
dolls and blocks and books he takes 
from it. 

12 



NEIGHBOURS 

You've heard the bells on his reindeer 
when they champed on the gables as he 
wheezed and puffed and squeezed down 
the tight old chimney place. (You never 
could understand how he managed to get 
through it, because it wasn't really a 
chimney, but just a hole, no bigger than 
the stovepipe. But the chimney didn't 
pinch at all — you believed that he would 
come and Faith widened the way for 
him.) 

He always brought the very things for 
which you wrote, too. Mother helped 
you with the letter — ^you and she com- 
posed it. She guided your hand and even 
suggested what to ask for. 

But you sealed the envelope all by 
yourself and mother took it out with her 
the next morning, because she knew the 
exact letter box from which he received 
his mail. 

Where are your sneers now? You 

know you'd give half the world to go 

back to-night and crawl upstairs to the 

bedroom under the eaves and wish things 

13 



NEIGHBOURS 

again — half the world to sleep at "home" 
one more Christmas Eve! 

No boy ever truly slept on the Eve ; but 
you pretended to, with all your might and 
main. And when mother and father tip- 
toed into the room and stood beside the 
cot, you peeped through one half-opened 
lid and wondered why he kissed her. 
And once a moonbeam slipped in and fell 
on her face and you saw tears on her 
lashes. 

And as it grew later and the wind 
growled and howled and the branches of 
the old locust slapped against the win- 
dow, you moved over and pinched broth- 
er to keep him awake as you had prom- 
ised. 

It seemed like a whole year of nights 
before you heard the sleigh-bells. My! 
You lay still and squeezed your eyes shut 
and you gave a snorty snore, for fear that 
Santa Claus might come upstairs and 
catch you waiting. And you didn't move 
again until you heard father lock his 
door. 

Then you crept downstairs. The par- 



NEIGHBOURS 

lour was dark ; but the stove was redhot, 
and its glow showed the ghostly row of 
stockings on the mantel. The big lump 
at the bottom of yours was an apple — ^you 
knew that without touching it; and the 
thing sticking out was a jumping jack, 
which he'd put in the top for good meas- 
ure, without your even asking for it. (He 
must have had plenty of jumping jacks, to 
be so liberal with them!) 

And over in the corner stood the tree. 
You never did figure how he got it down 
the chimney without smudging the angel 
with soot. 

The angel stood at the very top, and 
she had silver wings that glistened like 
snow, and all over the branches were 
gt)lden whirlimajigs and glass balls and 
red-striped peppermint canes and cornu- 
copias with pictures pasted on them and 
festoons of popcorn and chains of red and 
blue and green and yellow and white 
shiny paper. The toys were spread 
around on the floor. 

Your gun with the bayonet was resting 
against a "real-skin" horse, and on the 

15 



NEIGHBOURS 

other side was a soldier set, mounted on 
a big red card with gold edges. 

Sister's doll, which could open and shut 
its eyes (just as she asked), was resting, as 
comfortably as you please, in a blue rock- 
ing chair that was meant to be used. 

And the baby's shoo-fly had a rattle 
and a closed box on the tray that hung 
between the heads of the dappled greys. 

You had no business to touch that box, 
and it served you right when you got a 
scare when an impudent red-nosed Jack 
with carrot-coloured whiskers popped up 
and shook his cap in your face. 

Besides all these gorgeous gifts from 
Santa Claus were the two handkerchiefs 
for mother, and the carpet slippers for 
father, and the "Sanford and Merton" 
that Aunt Theresa sent you and the 
drum from Uncle George. 

They don't make drums like that nowa- 
days. The new ones haven't anything like 
the right sound. 

You couldn't wait until you had 
slipped the tape around your neck and 
i6 



NEIGHBOURS 

pulled the sticks from the sides — and 
then— "Rub-a-dub-dub . . ." 

Why, it isn't the drum at all — it's the 
steam radiator sounding "Tapsl" — call- 
ing you to come back — back over the 
Road of Years — back to now. 

But you're lonely and wistful, and you 
want to stay and hear the sleigh-bells 
ring — you want one more real Christmas, 

The things you can buy in the shops 
are all wrong. You can't get any fun out 
of them. 

Christmas gifts don't count if they 
aren't brought down the chimney. 



17 



"MAGGIE" 



"MAGGIE" 

THAT'S right— dive on through the 
crowd and get in front or you 
won't find a seat. It's six o'clock 
and the shops are out. If you wait for 
the women to get aboard, you'll have to 
stand up all the way home. There's a 
vacant place! Shoulder past that girl — 
you're stronger. You did it! Now, lean 
back and have a comfortable half-hour 
with the news. 

Why does she moon at you with such 
tired eyes? It's unfair to make you un- 
comfortable — mask your face with the 
paper — she can stand as well as you — 
better. She's had more practice — that's 
all she has done all day long. So a little 
while longer won't make much difference 
to her. If women will insist on going 
home just at the time men leave their 
offices, they mustn't be querulous if they 
find the cars crowded. 

21 



NEIGHBOURS 

The old ideas about courtesy and chiv- 
alry are getting to be moss-grown poppy- 
cock. They were well enough in the ro- 
mantic age, but this is the business epoch. 

We haven't time to pause for such 
foolish notions nowadays. Besides, now 
that women are competing with men, 
they must forego some of the privileges 
of the sex and not hope to be coddled — 
there's no sex in business. Dollars and 
cents and sentimentality can't be blended. 

Meanwhile Maggie hangs onto the 
strap and wearily shifts her weight from 
one tired foot to the other. She doesn't 
resent your boorishness — she's growing 
used to it — lots of ideals get nicked when 
women go to work. 

She left home yesterday morning, 
three hours earlier than your wife arose. 
It was dark in the room when her ninety- 
nine-cent alarm clock tattooed her out of 
bed. 

She had to light the gas to find her 
clothes — the water in the pitcher wore a 
skin of ice — (they don't build stationary 

22 



NEIGHBOURS 

wash basins with hot and cold water 
faucets in three-dollar-a-week "bou- 
doirs"). 

All day long (and all days are long in 
the shops) she was standing, stretching, 
bending, smiling — please don't forget the 
smile — perhaps you noticed it the last 
time you came to her counter. You 
smiled, too. Hers, however, was a differ- 
ent sort — it's one of the requirements — 
Rule 27— "Be cheerful." 

Yours was more of a social grin — a 
knowing, engaging, subtle, inviting affair. 
Oh, "they can't tell you anything about 
these shop-girls." 

But it may be worth while to learn 
something about them. And when you 
do, chances are that you won't smile in 
quite the same way. 

They're women who must make good 
— good women, or they wouldn't be 
drudging out their lives for a crust and a 
sup and a strip of bed. Just as frail as 
your women, with the same sort of souls 
and hearts and with the same yearning 

23 



NEIGHBOURS 

hunger for care and tenderness. Young 
women growing old at the rate of 24- 
months-a-year — ^women without chances 
or with lost chances. Some marry — 
some were married — most of them hope 
to be. 

Usually they're strong. But sometimes 
the half-starvation and the half-warmth 
and the longing for better shelter and all 
the food they'd like to eat and 

But most of them keep on. Keep on 
playing by the rules — harder rules than 
yours — in a tougher game and for 
smaller stakes. 

Women just as wholesome as your own 
— often with as good blood in their veins. 
Women who haven't lost anything except 
protection. They're paying the fiddler 
because their fathers didn't pay their in- 
surance premiums. 

The grey mists veil the brightest of 
their days — the menace of to-morrow is 
always between — a to-morrow whose 
hope fades with their fading and whose 
approach may only be provided against 
by the hoarded piece of silver wrenched 

24 



NEIGHBOURS 

out of a ten-dollar bill from which must 
also come board and lodging and carfare 
and clothes and doctor's bills and vaca- 
tions and 

Why aren't you smiling? 



25 



THE HOUSEHOLD BULLY 



THE HOUSEHOLD BULLY 

WHEN your family is afraid of 
you, it's time to be afraid for 
your family. 

Fear breeds deceit, not respect. 

The household bully soon turns his 
wife into a hypocrite and his children 
into sneaks and liars. 

Affection is a better monitor than 
harshness. 

Intolerance always incites revolt. 

The only family ties that hold are heart 
strings. 

You pride yourself on your justice, but 
we can find justice in the courts of law. 

You have no right to bandage your eyes 
and weigh your own flesh and blood upon 
impartial scales. 

You should be a haven of refuge, a 
merciful confidant in hours of error and 
terror. 

When a father is not "the best friend" 
29 



NEIGHBOURS 

of his children, it is because he is their 
worst enemy. 

The slums of the world are packed 
with women exiled to degradation by the 
false pride and relentlessness of men 
such as you. 

The prisons of the land are choked by 
felons whose criminal careers began in 
the evasions and defaults of a browbeaten 
boyhood. 

You forget that you are an adult, and 
demand an equal intelligence and realisa- 
tion of right and wrong from those who 
have neither the reasoning faculty nor 
the experience to see life as plainly as you 
behold it. 

Punishment without sympathetic ex- 
planation is not correction, but revenge. 

Girls do not prefer the hardships and 
uncertainties of adventure, unless the un- 
happiness they leave behind them is more 
definite than that which lies ahead. 

Boys do not betray fathers who have 
taught them loyalty and self-respect. 

The sins of your children be on your 
stubborn, unyielding head! 

30 



NEIGHBOURS 

God gave them into your keeping, to 
guide and guard and cherish — to inspire 
with ideals, to rear in kindness and com- 
prehension. 

Your sternness is not strength, but stu- 
pidity. 

Your harshness is not a mark of char- 
acter, but of callousness. 

You're an ignoramus — a bigoted, blus- 
tering bucko, cheating yourself of the 
joys of tenderness — robbing your family 
of the opportunity to develop its finest 
and noblest traits. 

The animal trainer eventually pays the 
penalty of his cruelty — the whipped and 
prodded tiger is cowed, not tamed — soon- 
er or later he strikes. 

Beware of the day when your son or 
your daughter, sullen and hardened by 
your uprearing, will rend your peace and 
stain your name and break your stiff 
pride. 

There is but one ruling power, and it 
is love. 

Fear of the law, fear of the hereafter, 

31 



NEIGHBOURS 

fear of the world's condemnation, are not 
morality's great protecting forces 

But fear of losing the love, fear of de- 
stroying the faith, fear of violating the 
confidence of those who are nearest and 
dearest — this is by far the most potent in- 
fluence in the lives of good men and 
women. 

If you would save the child, spare the 
rod rather than the love. 

A father is the man to come to, when 
a child can't confide in anyone else." 



32 



ONCE UPON A TIME 



ONCE UPON A TIME 

ONCE upon a time— how the years 
do fly — when you were a mere 
mite of a girlie, and believed in 
fairy spells and pots of gold under April 
rainbows — ^when every attic held a gob- 
lin, and four-leaf clovers were shrines 
of fortune, and lady-bugs were harbin- 
gers of luck — you dreamed a wonderful 
dream of the day-to-be, when Prince 
Goldenlocks would come riding by 

But why waste time on such tommyrot? 
This is the year 191 2. You are a woman. 
You've lost the road to the Castles of 
Spain (no grown-up ever did find the 
path), and all the whimsies and phanta- 
sies of long ago have blown away into 
the Never-Never-Land. 

The Prince rode north and met Gwen- 
dolyn Snuggs, the banker's snub-nosed 
daughter — and, if you keep on reading, 
the soup will be boiling all over the stove, 
35 



NEIGHBOURS 

and your boy will be home from school 
before the lunch-table is set. 

Why, bless us, this brings us back again 
to the dream, and now you must finish, 
because it was him that your imagination 
fondled — this son that would be born to 
you — straight and strong- thewed, proud 
of soul — a man-child, splendid with 
gifts of mind and person. 

But since you are not a banker's snub- 
nosed daughter and your child was born 
with a bawl in his mouth instead of a sil- 
ver spoon — which latter must be an 
extremely uncomfortable experience — 
somehow you've lost the habit of gilding 
to-morrows with futile longings. You've 
become a very matter-of-fact person, in 
whose calculations washtubs and cake- 
tins and dust-cloths play such an impor- 
tant part that you haven't time to go 
snooping through the garrets of memory. 

You sniff with bitter incredulity when 
you hear of wishing-rings, and such like 
bosh, and even if you won't acknowledge 
it, you've lost a mighty lot of faith, sim- 

36 



NEIGHBOURS 

ply because things didn't happen the way 
you had planned. 

And you won't look up and see how 
much more wonderful the world has be- 
come since the Grimms and Hans Chris- 
tian Andersen went out of style and Edi- 
son and Tesla and Marconi have come 
into fashion. 

If truth be told, the first real fairy spells 
are just beginning to glorify the world. 
There never was an era of magic before. 
But now, all things can be— your dreams 
can still come true — the maddest, farthest, 
fairest dreams ever flung to the stars. 

Any son of woman can achieve the ul- 
timate, in this century of far-hurled dares. 
Manger or mansion — cradle of gold or 
trundle of husk— predestine nothing. 

We have begun to look truths fair 
in the eye and to measure humans by the 
standard of fitness, not by the moss-grown, 
moth-eaten traditions of creed and breed. 
The meanest lie that ever blighted the 
universe— the lie of caste, of superiority 
by birth— is gasping under the throttling 
heel of Progress. 

37 



NEIGHBOURS 

East and West the thrones are toppling. 
The sovereignty of ignorance is ending. 

The Golden Age has dawned. This is 
the mighty moment. This is the most 
brilliant hour among all the illustrious 
sands of time. The genii have returned, 
but they no longer serve the lamp of Alad- 
din — instead they are the slaves of the 
lamp of learning. The Titans reincar- 
nated, flail with arms of steel, swing the 
trip-hammer, spin the turbine in the wa- 
terfall, shovel mountains off the map, and 
bore pathways through a hundred miles 
of granite. 

Sons of labourers, farmers, and clerks — < 
grandsons of peasants, serfs, and foun- 
dlings, are sawing continents in half, 
changing water into light, making corn 
out of desert sand. 

Your old dream was not big enough. 

If the seed of deed is in your son, if he 
is dogged and patient and self-respecting 
and courageous — wholesome of mind, 
stalwart and bold — he bears keys that un- 
lock every gate. 

38 



HIS FATHER OWNED THE 
CANDY SHOP 



HIS FATHER OWNED THE 
CANDY SHOP 

THE boy whose father owned the 
candy store missed all the fun of 
wishing that his father owned it. 

He never knew what it was to flatten 
his nose against the shop window, while 
he hesitated over the relative advantage 
of investing his penny in a lemon sucker 
(which would last for an hour) or a 
marshmallow peach (which would de- 
light his palate for one fleeting moment, 
but leave him with a greater longing than 
before). 

No matter how wisely or well he 
chose, he invariably decided that the se- 
lection had been ill-advised, and so there 
were always to-morrows with their un- 
realised hopes. 

Wishing for things is by far the best 
part of possessing them. The man who 

41 



NEIGHBOURS 

has too much at the outset finds too little 
at the end — nothing possesses value until 
there are standards of measurement. We 
cannot find the true weight of wealth, ex- 
cept upon the scales of poverty. 

Deprivation breeds appreciation. Am- 
bition shrivels where luxury flourishes. 

Energy grows poorly, in rich soil. Men 
are awakened and quickened and spurred 
on by need. We learn to know the worth 
of what we win by contrast with a period 
when we possessed less. 

The man who has all, has little; is in 
the midst of riches but not enriched by 
them. 

He is like the merboy whose whole life 
is spent in the water but who cannot ex- 
perience the thrill which runs through 
a hot, tired, dusty youngster who has 
trudged half a morning over sun-baked 
roads and stubblefields, for the momen- 
tary delight of his dive into the swim- 
ming-hole. 

You see Fortune isn't so lopsided in her 
division of bounties as she sometimes 
seems. If she gives away lavishly in one 
42 



NEIGHBOURS 

direction, she usually takes away a com- 
pensating something, to make up for it. 

The labourer envies the clerk because 
his duties are lighter ; the clerk envies his 
employer because he is master of his own 
business ; the employer envies the dawdler 
because he is master of his own time ; the 
dawdler envies the peer because his stat- 
us is assured ; the peer envies the monarch 
because his position is supreme — and the 
king envies the labourer and the clerk and 
the employer and the dawdler and the 
peer, because they possess rights as indi- 
viduals which he can never own. The 
circle is complete — it touches every hu- 
man of every caste and class. There is 
no such thing as complete happiness 
through mere possession of goods or po- 
sition. 

Happiness lies only in contentment. 
Envy and dissatisfaction find fruitful soil 
all the way from the ditch to the throne- 
room. 

The want of things inspires progress. 
The necessities of existence produce Men. 
43 



NEIGHBOURS 

The most important word in the lexicon 
of success is "must." 

It is in the striving and the struggling 
that the sinews of initiative and determi- 
nation are developed. The most useless 
as well as the most unhappy people on 
the face of the earth are those who have 
no needs. Workers get far more out of 
life than shirkers. 



44 



HOW MARY WENT WRONG 



HOW MARY WENT WRONG 

SUDDENLY, as the wakening of 
the orchards in the soft, sweet rains 
of an April night, so love blos- 
somed in Mary's heart. 

But to you (who may be or might have 
been her father) the miracle was hidden 
— the transition from childhood to wom- 
anhood is swift, subtle, even unconscious 
— and Mary herself did not realise the 
change. You still saw the child of a day 
ago. Your vision, dulled by the hard, 
tense years of a wage-chasing life, was not 
quick enough to sense the transfiguration. 

And so when Mary's first sweetheart 
"called," you were annoyed and angered ; 
you made up your mind to put a stop to 
such nonsense, at once. 

There was nothing wrong. They were 
simply two children playing the oldest 
game of make-believe under the stars. 

Your frowns, side remarks and general 

47 



NEIGHBOURS 

hostility, humiliated the lad and with- 
ered the girl with shame. 

You forgot that a guest had entered 
your door. 

You might have greeted him kindly 
and gained his respect and liking. 

A boy's code is a clean, fine thing — a 
trusted youth generally becomes trust- 
worthy. But you drove him away, hot 
with resentment, insulted and afraid to 
return to your home. 

A common wrong inspired them to a 
common cause of deceit. 

Thereafter they met clandestinely. 
Mary began to spend evenings "studying 
with her school friends," and what began 
as a harmless, little cub courtship, became 
warped, and Mary with it — another good 
girl turned into the wrong path by the 
folly of a father. 

Successful in eluding detection, she 
slowly grew bolder. Her tongue quickly 
became glib with protecting lies. Within 
a few months all fear of you and your au- 
thority disappeared, and contempt for 

48 



NEIGHBOURS 

your perception and credulity succeeded 
love and reverence. 

Before her second long skirt, she had 
graduated into the love school of the 
street corner, adept in all the dangerous, 
reckless arts of the prowling flirt, an inti- 
mate of pool-room loafers, a by-word to 
the town's rotters — and finally . . . 

The same old story, the same old father, 
the same old Mary, the same old tragedy. 



49 



LEST YOU FORGET TOO LONG! 



LEST YOU FORGET TOO LONG! 

THE winds sang to you last night — 
they crooned around the windows 
and called through the chimney 
and sobbed the oldest music of the 
spheres. 

Out of the unknown they came to you, 
laden with such melodies as only great 
hearts and brave souls can understand — 
wistful and eerie largos of the what-has- 
been and the what-can-never-be. 

There aren't words with which to 
phrase the burden of their lays — at sound 
of which old wounds dulled with the chill 
of Time ache to open and voices call from 
the Never-Never-Land, asking the why 
and the wherefore of things that shame 
you and make the best in you blush for 
the worst of you. 

Oh, the irreparable Yesterdays — the 
steps that can never be retraced — the 
roses that can't be picked from the gutters 

53 



NEIGHBOURS 

of wantonness and cleansed of their soil I 

And it isn't so much the things which 
you did — the reckless impulse or the 
meditated wrong — as what you have neg- 
lected. 

There are flowers that have withered 
these many, many years in the Gardens 
of Memory. There are sweet, clean vis- 
ions of the Past toward which your mind 
has long since ceased to turn. 

There are lonely mounds in quiet acres, 
marked by rain-stained shafts, around 
which the grass grows wild and the weeds 
find root. The wind is trying to tell you — 
trying to say to you that there's still time 
— time to remember. Not with ostenta- 
tion and parade of things that men can 
see. Real monuments can't be built of 
stone. Memorials of tinted glass are tab- 
lets to your vanity, by which a mob can 
learn the lavishness, not the depth of your 
emotion. If you would build windows 
to memory, set them up within a soul. 

A woman is lying in a bald, bare room, 
tossing with fever, stung between pride 
and grief, shuddering for fear that she 

54 



NEIGHBOURS 

must plead at the doors of Charity. 
There's a bed in a wholesome, sun-swept 
hospital, to which a Memory might send 
her, in token of love for another woman 
who would have been glad to know that 
recollection of Her made you pause in the 
blind grind long enough to place a monu- 
ment of gratitude in a stranger's heart and 
to rear it there in Her name. 

A boy will shiver in the early cold to- 
morrow morning — and go slipping on 
through the slush while you are snug 
within your blankets — a wee bit of a lad 
— one of the pitiful cogs in the wheels that 
turn to earn your leisure. 

There was a child in the Long Ago — 
about the same age. And when the light 
died out of his bonnie eyes and he went 
— but what's the use of trying to bring it 
back to you? The winds have sung it 
until they are a-weary. You never did 
know — you never will. 

You wept for a day and you moaned 
for a night. 

Then back into the whirling, swirling, 
pleasure-glad, money-mad throng — back 

55 



NEIGHBOURS 

into the fight where Might prevails as 
Right — back to the selfish striving — back 
to smug content — back to gross and blunt- 
ing indulgence. 

And, meanwhile, the mound stays hid- 
den under the ragged grasses and the 
shaft beneath the cypress grows thicker 
with moss. And luckless women toss in 
their cheerless rooms. And boys, so like 
the Other, draw thin, cheap jackets tight- 
er around their miserable frost-stung 
chests, and you 

Oh, well, you just keep on forgetting 
and wish that the infernal wind would 
stop rattling the shutters. 



56 



THE PASSING OF THE 
FAIRY TALE 



THE PASSING OF THE FAIRY 
TALE 

''Tp ISN'T at all the same world it 

I used to be. Boys nowadays 

don't even have freckles. They 

dress like Sunday all through the week. 

Their pants are strapped at the knee, and 

even in summer they go 'round in shoes. 

Sitting Bull is dead, and all the other 
Indians are football players or market 
gardeners. The only train robbers left 
are on the Pullmans. 

It's against the law for anybody but a 
congressman, a college professor, a mayor, 
or some similar professional elocutionist 
to make a noise on the Fourth of July. 

The best prevailing substitute for 
"shinny" is a fat man's game called 
golf. To-morrow morning, as you walk 
down town ask the first ten youngsters 
you meet if they know of a good "swim- 
ming-hole," and you'll be lucky to find 
59 



NEIGHBOURS 

one who ever dived oft' of anything but a 
dock. 

The candy stores wouldn't know what 
you meant if you asked for an "all-day 
sucker." "Uncle Tom's Cabin" hasn't 
been in the neighbourhood since the year 
you came to town. And as for a circus — a 
real one, with actual pink lemonade and 
seats close enough to see the missing span- 
gles on the acrobats' tights 

"Once upon a time" is already an ob- 
solete phrase. Children gape with ennui 
as they read the adventures of Aladdin. 
"The Ogre with the Five-Mile Voice" 
seems to be an idiotic book to the twelve- 
year-old who constructs his own Marconi 
station and picks up messages from a hun- 
dred miles around. 

Imagination, grown grey in nursery 
service, has deserted to Industry. Fancy 
has become practical and is earning an 
independent income as chief adviser and 
architect to Commerce. 

Grimm Brothers and the Hans Chris- 
tian Andersen Company now invent 
things instead of thrills. They still have 
60 



NEIGHBOURS 

the story habit, but they write their new 
fairy tales with the compass and the tri- 
square, and illustrate them with the elec- 
tric crane and the pneumatic tool. 

The story of "Hop-o'-My-Thumb" 
isn't half so improbable as the tale of the 
"Canned Song." And the "Adventures 
of the Sleeping Beauty" are common- 
place beside the exploits of the "Giant 
Who Lives in a Wire." 

As for Jules Verne! His laurels 
have faded. Romance repudiates him! 
"Around the World in Eighty Days" is 
an out-of-date railroad and steamship 
time-table and the submarine boat com- 
panies have for some years utilised 
"Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the 
Sea" for catalogue purposes. 

We are stretching our hands farther 
than our fathers stretched their visions. 
Science, the great Locksmith, supplies us 
with new keys every day. 

We have learned to read the Diary of 
Nature in the stratified rock — ^we have 
eyes to see ten thousand miles — one scale 
6i 



NEIGHBOURS 

that weighs the stars and another that 
vibrates at the tread of a microbe's 

foot 

But 



62 



IS YOUR NAME 
SCROOGE? 



IS YOUR NAME SCROOGE? 

WHAT follows is confessedly im- 
pertinent — and there are those 
who will consider it decidedly 
unpleasant. 

To begin with and to end with, it's 
about Christmas, yet not about holly and 
mistletoe and plum pudding and pleasant 
things, but about another side, the under 
side, the outside — (call it what you 
please) — a side that never bothered you 
and which probably won't even after you 
know about it — for, after all, if there 
were that in you which can be stirred by 
words, you would have been different all 
along. 

Of course it's disturbing, when you are 
in the midst of bright holiday contempla- 
tions — just when you are settling down 
into your annual Christmas complacency 
— flattering yourself with kindliness and 
whole-souled generosity — thinking of the 
happiness you will bring to near and 

65 



NEIGHBOURS 

dear ones, to have come trooping a lot 
of miserable, wan, unpleasant visions — 
images of pitiful misery — women out of 
work — men out-at-elbows — fathers and 
mothers without the price of a Christmas 
breakfast, much less a Christmas hearth. 

Come, face the question: What have 
you planned to do for the poverty- 
stricken? 

Own up; have you even thought of 
them? Glance over your mental list for 
so much as one memorandum about a 
hungry child. 

Why, you don't know what Christmas 
means! You've missed its real spirit. 
You've simply considered your own pros- 
perous circle — gifts to people with filled 
purses don't count at all. 

You probably consider yourself a man 
of sentiment and beyond doubt you have 
salted the pages of "The Christmas 
Carol" with many a maudlin tear. 

But have you ever reflected that you 
are more or less a Scrooge yourself and 
that up to date there is not a single entry 
66 



NEIGHBOURS 

on the Great Book crediting you with one 
starveling's happiness? 

No excuses — you haven't any. You 
have seen and heard enough of evictions 
and bread-lines to know that there is al- 
ways a nearby chance for the man with a 
little bit more than the rest to equalise 
the good luck of the world by at least one 
annual kindness. 

(So now, keenly alive to your past irre- 
sponsibility, you have, of course, deter- 
mined to visit the toyshop and the gro- 
cer's, or at least send a check to the Salva- 
tion Army — that's what always happens 
in the Christmas stories — the hero simply 
needs a reminder and then he can't rest 
until he has trailed poverty to its lair.) 

But 

Since this isn't fiction and as you have 
probably agreed that these remarks are 
impertinent, you will follow your usual 
Christmas custom, making only those ex- 
penditures which will protect you from 
the criticism of relatives and social inti- 
mates — postpone your purchases until 
Christmas Eve — drive a half-dead shop 

67 



NEIGHBOURS 

girl from pillar to post and insist upon 
immediate delivery of your selections, so 
as to keep a poor devil of a teamster and 
some miserable wisp of a boy driving 
about until dawn dims the star that pro- 
claimed to Bethlehem "Peace on earth, 
good will toward men." 



68 



A FAIR MAN 



A FAIR MAN 

HE gazes at life through a window- 
pane and does not view it through 
a lens. He sees all things clearly, 
since he does not permit prejudice to dis- 
tort his vision. 

He continually guards himself against 
the error of diminishing the value of any 
man's works because of a personal antipa- 
thy. And on the other hand, he is just 
as careful not to make the equally great 
mistake of exaggerating the virtues and 
attainments of those whom he loves or 
likes. 

He measures facts with honest tapes 
and weighs folks as he finds them, not as 
he hopes or hears or wishes them to be. 

He forms no definite opinion on any 
subject until he is qualified by the pos- 
session of information sufficient to reach 
a sane, unbiased conclusion. 

He heeds neither gossip nor slander. 

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NEIGHBOURS 

The one is bred of thoughtlessness and 
the other is the bread of malice. 

He despises the anonymous attack. 
Honesty never wears the mark of the 
bravo. Truth does not lurk in ambush. 

He v^aits to hear both sides of a quar- 
rel and insists upon maintaining ii neutral 
attitude until he knows enough to judge 
fairly. 

He admires many whose essentially 
personal characteristics and inclinations 
do not appeal to him: admiration is the 
approval of deeds. It is a calm, clear 
sum total of abilities, in the addition of 
which the symbols of friendship do not 
figure. 

He approves of the achievements of 
many men in whose company he finds no 
pleasure and whom he does not desire to 
meet upon an intimate social basis. 

He searches beneath dress and under 
address for ability and stability. He 
knows that tailors cannot change the cut 
of a man's character and that talent is 
not always glib in its expression. 

He does not make the common error of 
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NEIGHBOURS 

confusing education with intelligence. 
The world is filled with good brains 
which have missed the opportunity of 
training. Intelligence is an instinct and 
an experience, while culture is largely a 
schooling — a memorising of facts and 
rules and incidents. 

He remembers his own mother, and is 
therefore considerate in thought and deed 
of all her sex. He neither degrades them 
by act nor by word. He will not utter a 
lie against a woman, but, if need arise 
and he may thereby spare her hurt, he 
will gladly lie in her cause. 

He is never a snob. He exercises his 
right to choose for associates those with 
whose views and habits he is in sympathy; 
but he does not assume that the rest of the 
world is thereby wrong, inferior and 
foolish. 

His given word is his pledged bond, 
and the bad faith of another never justi- 
fies its default, any more than the theft of 
his own property by a neighbour would 
lead him to retaliate in kind. 
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NEIGHBOURS 

He obtrudes neither his religion nor 
his politics, recognising the right of every 
man to his sincere beliefs. 

He bestows charity with a smile and 
seeks to erase the sense of obligation in 
those whom he assists. 

He advertises neither his good works 
nor his attainments. 

He is gracious to all of lowly station or 
of advanced years, and never flaunts his 
better fortune before his inferiors. 

He makes ostentation neither of his 
possessions nor his culture, realising that 
his opportunities may have given him ad- 
vantages which less favourable surround- 
ings might not have produced. 

He discusses his grievances with no 
one, not wishing to inflict his essentially 
personal worries upon his fellows. 

He trades neither upon his name nor 
his birth, nor does he traffic in the power 
or influence of his friends. 

He does not prostitute his honour to 
business profit, nor does he permit his 
women to sacrifice their personal inclina- 
tions in the cause of his advancement. 
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NEIGHBOURS 

He asks no man to perform any serv- 
ice which he could not and would not per- 
form without smirch to his -own self-re- 
spect 

He regards wealth as a pleasant pos- 
session, but one which does not justify 
the cancellation of a single attribute of 
honour. 

There are countless things which he 
will not do for the sake of money, because 
he knows how few real things money can 
do in return. 

Above all else he is a gentle man. 



7^ 



TOMMY'S MOTHER AND 
THE NEEDLE GATE 



TOMMY'S MOTHER AND THE 
NEEDLE GATE 

THERE was a camel — a very foolish 
camel — and there was a needle, 
with a very small eye, and the 
camel tried to thread his way through — 
eh, you know that old tale? Well, after 
all, it isn't really our story, which is about 
Tommy — the snub-nosed, red-headed 
Tommy who works for you. Perhaps 
you don't know him by name — but maybe 
this will identify him: the shabby boy 
whose cuffs never peep out and whose 
toes sometimes do. 

It is unpleasant to have such an un- 
kempt youngster about the place. Call 
him in and call him down, or, better still, 
send for his mother and insist upon more 
care in his appearance. 

Tommy's mother is worth meeting; 
she's quite a wonderful person; a most 
remarkable mathematician. It would 

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NEIGHBOURS 

amuse you to see her figure out of her 
three weekly washings and Tommy's 
three weekly dollars, rent and clothes and 
food and coal and wood and doctor's bills, 
besides the world of other things that peo- 
ple must have if they must live. Why, 
it might pay you to have Tommy's mother 
come and work for you; her system, if 
applied to your expense accounts, would 
save thousands of dollars in the course 
of a year. She takes a great interest in 
figures; she practices all day long — "six 
pairs of socks — forty-seven towels — eight 

sheets " 

But then Tommy's mother is able in so 
many ways — a veritable admirable Crich- 
toness: laundry proprietress (and also de- 
livery wagon for the laundry), cook, 
nurse-maid, seamstress, upstairs-down- 
stairs-and-general-utility-maid — but no 
woman ever knows what is in her until 
the heel of poverty begins to grind it out 
of her. And then a very strange thing 
happens: she grows so healthy that she 
doesn't go to bed on account of headaches 
or feel that it's at all necessary to run to 
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NEIGHBOURS 

the mountains and unprostrate her nerves. 
It's really more wonderful than the faith 
cure — this poverty cure. (Next time 
your wife complains, look her over and 
consider how much good it might do 
her.) 

Any mother who can perform so many 
other marvels of industry has no excuse 
for neglecting the hole in Tommy's 
pants. She's growing careless — that's it. 
She's probably wasting her time planning 
Easter costumes. Oh, these women — they 
require so much reflection before they 
can decide between a mauve messaline 
over grey taffeta or a pale lavender 
Panama cloth with baby Irish. (This 
spring's tints, if unwisely chosen, are apt 
to play havoc with the complexion.) 

But it's quite possible that Tommy's 
mother is really made of the same meat 
and strung with the same nerves as your 
wife; and sixteen hours of day-after-day 
drudging to half-feed and half-clothe her 
babies, may have so numbed and blinded 
her that she misses sight of such a big 
thing as a little rent in a boy's suit. 
8i 



NEIGHBOURS 

All of which foregoing dribble is rank 
sentimentality, in which neither of us be- 
lieves. 

But (for argument sake) suppose you 
were sentimental and did believe in things 
and suppose you took Tommy down the 
street and made ten dollars behave like a 
complete wardrobe (the same kind of a 
ten-dollar bill which paid for the wine 
after theatre last night) , and suppose 

But, as we just agreed, neither of us is 
sentimental. Still, if we were and there 
is a needle-eyed gate somewhere between 
here and hereafter, mightn't it be possi- 
ble that you could squirm through it 
more readily if your pockets were thinned 
out occasionally for Tommy? In which 
case his mother might know a prayer that 
would help out, if the eye squeezed very 
hard. 



82 



ANYBODY CAN BE 

A GENTLEMAN 



ANYBODY CAN BE A 
GENTLEMAN 

GENTLEMEN are made and not 
born. Every good family had to 
have its founder. 

Scratch any coat of arms hard enough 
and you'll find a common strain and a 
coarse grain under the gold and azure 
emblazonment. 

The ancestors of the highest nobility 
manhandled fields of grain and fodder 
before their descendants could decorate 
their heraldic fields with armorial de- 
vices. 

Legend has whispered many a weird 
tale, but the flightiest old wife never 
heard of a babe born with aught but a 
hairy crown. 

Czars, kings, dukes, earls, and cotillon 
leaders are purely human invention. 

The grandsires of the haughtiest and 

85 



NEIGHBOURS 

naughtiest of aristocrats were malt deal- 
ers, and cattle stealers, and shoemakers, 
and undertakers, and rag pickers, and pig 
stickers, and stone breakers. 

Good breeding is not an inheritance, 
but a habit. 

Kindness, consideration, repose, cour- 
tesy, unselfishness, and self-control have 
nothing in common with money or mono- 
grams. 

Decorous bearing, quiet demeanour, 
and soft speech are within any man's 
reach. 

Poverty does not necessitate coarseness. 

Vulgarity cannot excuse itself on any 
ground. 

Wealth cannot hide bad manners. 
Rich bounders are all the more notice- 
able. Gilded gaucherie is advertised by 
its very lavishness. 

No degree of affluence can alter the 
character of a rotter. 

A refined servant is the social superior 
of an offensive master. 

The type of your employment, the 
wage at which you work, the street in 
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NEIGHBOURS 

which you live, offer no extenuation for 
rudeness or crudeness. 

Misfortune may have barred you from 
a competent schooling — poverty may 
temporarily block you from your ambi- 
tions — but neither capital nor education 
are requisite to good behaviour. More 
than once a fighter, endowed with strong 
and vital impulses, has forced his way to 
the top without regard to the finer 
usages, but the road is always shorter and 
the path is always smoother for those who 
remember to be decent and considerate. 

Accident, illness, disasters, drought, 
panic, and competition can singly or in 
combination abort advancement, check 
achievement and paralyse action — phys- 
ical frailty and need of training can re- 
tard progress, but every man, everywhere, 
has the time, the place, and the oppor- 
tunity to be a gentleman. 



87 



THE WINDOWS OF HOPE 
AND MEMORY 



THE WINDOWS OF HOPE AND 
MEMORY 

THE wardrobe mistress lingers at 
Nellie's door. She's waiting for 
her peacock costume. One of the 
pony ballet caught her foot in it before 
Nellie could swish the train aside and the 
rent will have to be repaired. Managers 
are very considerate — of gowns. The 
stage is a place where lots of things get 
wrecked, if one is thoughtless — and cos- 
tumes costing up to $175 must be pains- 
takingly guarded. Nellie wears seven 
imported creations in the new revue. 
Her salary is twenty "per." 

Perhaps you've noticed Nellie — she 
stood fifth in the line — the last line. For 
the past five years she's been moving back 
— at a distance crow's-feet and loosening 
chins don't show. (And then, too, grease 
paint and rice powder help some.) 

From where you sit, Nellie looks stun- 

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NEIGHBOURS 

ning — almost as pretty as when she be- 
longed in the front line, right up near the 
stage boxes. 

But in fifteen years lines come and go 
— and some stay. 

Hazel has Nellie's old place now. 
Hazel has only "been on" fifteen days. 
She's wholesome and young and rosy. 
Her eyes sparkle — her limbs are all life 
as she whirls and swirls through the 
dances. This is such a gay world — with 
its calcium and tinsel and crashing music 
and brightness and cheer — without any 
of the worries and sorrows — with none of 
the grinding, blinding duties, but just 
freedom and independence — the maddest 
make-believe all come true. 

Why, only a month ago she was wasting 
her days in the routine of matter-of-fact 
home life — an ordinary, usual person, no 
better than you or I. But now 

At last, Nellie has changed the 
sequined robe for a street suit and is mak- 
ing ready to leave. Hazel walks back 
to the hotel with her. Hazel is pouting 
with disappointment — at the last moment 
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NEIGHBOURS 

the little wine supper is ofif. And so to- 
night she has time to lie and think of 
things. And Nellie, across the hall, is 
thinking, too — both are thinking of their 
roads — of the same road, but neither 
knows that, nor would you or I, if we 
were peeping at it through Hazel's eyes 
or Nellie's. 

This is the road that Nellie sees: A 
long, winding, twisted way which runs 
through years of tears and of shattered 
hopes. There is mud underfoot and 
blasted ideals are strewn about. The 
road is bathed in sunlight where it starts, 
but keeps getting darker and harder and 
the farther it runs the more the grade 
waxes. There are wonderful dreams 
foundered in the ruts and wrecked things 
in the dirt and, somewhere towards the 
outset, a heart-hurt and — memories. 

But Hazel doesn't see any of these 
things on her road. It's covered with a 
golden haze and has a golden pave and 
it's hedged with rose fantasies. In the 
distance dashing princes are prancing 
towards her (at least they would prance 
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NEIGHBOURS 

if they weren't motor-car princes), and 
almost within reach is a castle (which 
might stand upon a terraced hill if this 
weren't an age when castle building is 
done nearer to the ground). And all 
along the road are wonderful things wait- 
ing for her — fame and triumph, lavish 
luxury, happiness and 

Poor Hazel and poor Nellie — ^it's 
actually the same road — only the years 
have changed it for you. 

We all see the road differently at the 
end of fifteen days and after fifteen years. 
We begin, by gazing at it through a case- 
ment of hope and then when we've lived 
and suffered and are a'weary, we look 
back at it through the window of memory. 

The windows do it all — the road never 
changes. 



94 



WHO THREW THE BRICK? 



WHO THREW THE BRICK? 

AS folks go you're just as kindly and 
gentle and sympathetic and chari- 
table as the next man. 

Tucked away in odd corners of your 
heart, there are all sorts of sentimental 
impulses. Chances are, in your whole 
life-time you never sat down and delib- 
erately schemed a cold-blooded campaign 
against your worst enemy. And it's just 
because you are so, that you're such a 
menace to the community. 

Irresponsible fools cause more trouble 
to the world than all the organised forces 
of malice and disorder and crime. 

There now, don't begin to sputter and 
protest. We expected you to grow ex- 
cited when you were indicted. 

You quite honestly believe that this is 
an undeserved arraignment; you're quite 
sincere in your belief that you're harm- 
less. 

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NEIGHBOURS 

And when you sent Brown down the 
slope of ruin— ^even then you didn't 
realise the ultimate consequences of your 
thoughtless assault upon his reputation. 

It happened in this wise: One morn- 
ing Jones and you were riding down 
town, and having no better subject for 
conversation you indulged in the usual 
banalities — the market, police, the 
weather — and then quite accidentally 
Brown's name came up and you suddenly 
remembered, without recalling when or 
where or from whom you had heard it, 
that Brown was "wandering from the 
straight and narrow path." You didn't 
pause to consider the source of your in- 
formation. You just reached down casu- 
ally — and for lack of something better to 
do or say, picked up a handful of mud 
and smeared it all over his name — and 
then forgot all about it and went on your 
way without one qualm of conscience. 

Now Brown is down and out — credit 
and business gone to pot. 

Rumour did it — rumour, inspired by a 
babbling, blithering ass. 

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NEIGHBOURS 

We've been trailing the fatal lie back 
to its author. We've picked up the brick 
that did the trick. We don't blame the 
man who hurled it, but the man who 
made it. You're the responsible party. 

Within an hour after Jones left you, 
he'd passed the slander on to Wilson; and 
week after week and month after month 
— exaggerated by the seeming corrobora- 
tion of this man and that, gossip grew 
into murder. 

You talk too much. You accept too 
many uninvestigated bits of hearsay as 
conclusive evidence. You hold the 
honour of other men far too lightly. 

Every day a knowing wink, or a sug- 
gestive shrug or an insinuating smile from 
fools of your sort brings disaster to hon- 
est citizens and shame upon decent 
womanhood. 

We're all occasional busybodies. 

It's a far cry back to the days of the 
Roman Coliseum, but once in a while we 
revert to the ancient instincts of our dis- 
tant forbears, and ere we can check our- 
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NEIGHBOURS 

selves down goes the thumb, and along 
with it somebody's reputation. 

There'd be far less suffering and pessi- 
mism on earth if we'd set out to find the 
best in folks half as hard as we search for 
the worst. 



lOO 



THE FIVE-CENT DOLLAR 



THE FIVE-CENT DOLLAR 

DUN AND BRADSTREET rate 
him rich. His name works magic 
at the bank. His check is good 
for millions. His vaults are stuffed with 
stocks and bonds. But his dollars have 
an actual value of five cents each. 

He is bloated in riches and writhing 
in poverty — he's, at the same time, a 
plutocrat and a pauper. 

Fate has made an ass of him — she has 
given him all the cash he asked for, but 
she has omitted the formula that gives it 
value. 

He has the lock, but he can't find the 
key — he doesn't know what to do with 
his money. 

He is a lineal descendant of King 
Midas — he learned the golden touch, but 
he can't control its power. In his mad- 
ness for millions he has transmuted all 
the realities of life into useless trash. 
103 



NEIGHBOURS 

He placed his Springtime in the mint- 
ing press — he turned all his hopes and 
all his visions into coin — stamped all the 
tenderness out of his heart and milled the 
peace ofif his soul. 

Year by year he went on amassing 
wealth and just as steadily losing all that 
was best in him. All that was kindly — 
all that was joyous — he turned to dross. 

Now in his silver age he is yearning 
for his golden youth. 

There's an ache that he doesn't under- 
stand — a hungry hole in his breast where 
godly heritages shrivelled and died from 
disuse. 

He can't enjoy himself — he isn't 
trained for the job. 

His rapacity destroyed his capacity to 
comprehend the Big Message. 

He owns a yacht, but it's a drifting 
argosy with dead sails — with all his 
wealth he can't make it carry him into 
the Land of Dreams. 

He can't see — he can't hear — greed has 
dulled his eye — made him colour-blind 
104 



NEIGHBOURS 

— none of the wonders of life have a 
meaning. 

For him the mountain summits are 
bare — the flowers have died on the slopes 
and the north winds have locked the 
brooks and silenced the waterfall. 

He is a man without illusions — a moral 
cripple — a Croesus starving in his treas- 
ure vaults. 

When you are wrapping yourself in 
ideals, he was rapping out ideas. 

You have only sold your services — he 
has put every drop of blood into the mar- 
ket place — and the joke of it all is that 
he had to wait until now before he found 
that every dollar is not the same size — 
that its purchasing power varies with the 
individual. 

He has overpaid. No man gets out of 
existence more than his legitimate allot- 
ment. If he has gains in one direction, 
he loses a compensating something in 
another way. 

The price of the king's crown is heavy 
with heart-ache. The meanest subject in 
his kingdom can marry as he wills, but 
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NEIGHBOURS 

the mightiest of monarchs must mate at 
the dictate of the state. 

The embezzler defaults with property 
that he did not earn, but from that mo- 
ment every hour of every day is haunted 
with the dread of detection. 

The roisterer indulges himself in every 
whim and wilfulness, but settles the bill 
when his wasted vitality exposes him to 
diseases against which the continent man 
has stored sufficient energy to defend 
himself. 

Old John Moneybags has the price of 
every form of enjoyment, but he can't 
locate the trails that lead to happiness. 

It isn't the size of a man's roll, but the 
size of a man's soul that finally counts. 



1 06 



SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER 



SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER 

I DO not know her name ; perhaps you 
do. I have never seen her face; 
maybe her picture hangs on your 
bedroom wall. 

By some strange chance her head 
might some day have rested on your 
shoulder. She's somebody's daughter; 
pray God, not yours. 

To-night the claws of the city are rip- 
ping at her soul. Loneliness and hunger 
have sapped her will and false pride has 
blinded her. 

She is not a bad girl, just tired, numb. 
The dice were loaded. The game was 
crooked. The odds were too great for 
her wisdom and strength. The road was 
strange and the guide-posts lied. 

Back home, life was a drab thing and 
sober-faced. The petty tyrannies of the 
little town, the eternal sameness of the 
years, starved her imagination. 
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NEIGHBOURS 

Romance was hungry within her, and 
cried for beauty and mystery and adven- 
ture. And out of deprivation sprang 
reckless yearning. 

You did not understand, mother-of- 
hers, wherever you are. You could not 
see with her eyes. Your own were filled 
with pictures of family wash and cooking 
and mending and brooms and dust cloths. 

Fate has paid you in stingy and bitter 
pence. 

But that is just what she saw, that and 
the thankless yoke under which the wives 
of poor men struggle and strain and sur- 
render. 

The wings of her fancy kept beating 
across the miles and carried her into a 
dreamland of joy and gayety, with real 
money, all her own, to spend as she chose 
— to buy what she wished. 

But the wage shrank when it reached 
her — its purchasing power shrivelled. 
. Five dollars a week (six, seven if you 
insist) — just enough to give shelter and 
sustenance. 

At first she was straight — it was in her 
no 



NEIGHBOURS 

blood — in her traditions. The women of 
your family never contemplated the easier 
way. 

But young girls who live alone can sel- 
dom protect themselves. Few have the 
intuition to comprehend until it is too 
late — some are too weak to fight it out — 
and some are too weary. 

And now she has paid the price — she 
has crossed the dead line. 

The city has dropped its mask and she 
sits staring into its brutal, relentless, in- 
exorable face. At last she realises all 
that she has lost — all that might have 
been — the happiness that patience could 
have won. 

She sees "the man back home" who 
one day would have brought his love and 
the children that love would have 
brought 



III 



TO A POOR BOY 



TO A POOR BOY. 

THERE are two great sources of 
power — ^wealth and brains. 
The mind is a mint. Money 
doesn't make a man strong, but strong 
men make money. 

Dollars don't improve intellect, but in- 
telligence does create wealth. 

It isn't nearly so important to have 
something to start with as to choose the 
right thing to start for. 

It is a bigger advantage to begin with 
empty hands than an empty head — more 
lucky to be born with a clever tongue 
than with a silver spoon in your mouth. 

Determination is a richer asset than a 
rich father — health, honesty and courage 
the only needed capital for success. 

Everybody has a chance every day to 
prove himself, and boys who enter the 
fight earliest can try for the top oftenest. 

Education shortens the struggle, but 

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NEIGHBOURS 

schools only teach orderly habits of think- 
ing. They develop brains but do not sup- 
ply them. 

Theory is based upon the record of past 
performances, but to-day's practice in- 
vents, discovers and develops the facts 
upon v^hich to-morrow's instructions will 
be based. 

You think that you are handicapped 
by the circumstances which forced you 
to work, before you could complete your 
schooling, but there is a compensating 
advantage in entering the game years 
ahead of older boys, who must undergo 
your practical experiences at a far more 
advanced age. 

An A.B. or a Ph.D. are of little use to 
an ASS. 

Three-fourths of the most important 
positions in every community are promo- 
tions from the ranks. 

Originality doesn't require guide-posts 
— it sets them. 

Loyalty, will-power and reliability 
quite counterbalance affluence and influ- 
ence. 

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NEIGHBOURS 

Common sense and health are far more 
essential than capital. 

Fools and weaklings can't hold what 
they have. 

Keep your body sound; exercise fre- 
quently; read good books. Choose some 
one subject; gather all the data that you 
can find in relation to it; devote at least 
one hour per night to its study. 

Be sure that not one day passes which 
has not added to your knowledge of the 
trade or profession or business you have 
selected as a life work. 

Put all your heart and attention into 
your tasks. 

Inspire your employers with confi- 
dence in your truthfulness and faith. 

Make few promises, but once made, 
keep your pledges at any cost. Go 
straight. Dishonesty is always discov- 
ered ; lies are always detected ; sneaks are 
always unmasked. 

It's a far finer thing to be right than to 
be bright. 

Everything that was ever accomplished 
on the face of this earth was achieved 

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NEIGHBOURS 

with the same equipment that you possess. 

Michelangelo, Arkwright, Lincoln, 
Edison and Ford had no more and no 
better tools. 

With their example staring you in the 
face, poverty will always be a poor ex- 
cuse for failure. 



ii8 



THE LITTLE BROTHERS 
OF DESTRUCTION 



THE LITTLE BROTHERS OF 
DESTRUCTION 

LITTLE habits destroy great men. 
Big mistakes seldom wreck. 
Great cliffs do not menace the 
mariner, but hidden reefs and sunken 
rocks send many a good ship to the bot- 
tom. 

The redwood climbs into the skies, 
brushing the clouds with his century- 
laden branches, contemptuous of hurri- 
cane and earthquake and fire — defiant of 
disaster — impregnable to every force ex- 
cept the gnaw of worm and the bore of 
beetle. 

The Titans that tear fortresses from 
their seats and fling tidal waves across an 
empire are impotent against the masters 
of the grove. 

But the Little Brothers of Destruction, 
born to die within a puny hour, relent- 
lessly and doggedly persisting in their 

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NEIGHBOURS 

mission, unreckoning of time, pursue 
without pause the task that is never abated 
until the lord of the forest, eaten to the 
core, totters and crashes under his own 
weight 

No man is stronger than his petty weak- 
nesses. No career is invulnerable. 

Carelessness, recklessness and self-com- 
placency expose the heel of every 
Achilles. 

The monsters of mythology and ro- 
mance were just big bluffs ; they brought 
no peril to humanity — they advertised 
themselves too prominently. 

The enemy, marching with blare of 
trumpet and beat of drum, stands no show 
because he makes too much show. It's 
the ambuscaded regiment, the troop in 
the trenches, that play havoc. 

All the dragons and salamanders in 
legend weren't one whit as terrible as the 
germs and microbes and bacilli rioting 
through the rotten blood of one infected 
vagrant. 

A solitary rat, laden with the couriers 
of plague, frowns more darkly upon civil- 

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NEIGHBOURS 

isation than a thousand herds of ram- 
pageous, blatant, bellowing dinosaurs. 

We can deal with anything that we can 
manhandle. 

Glaring follies are only temporarily 
distressing. The instant they become suf- 
ficiently prominent to attract attention 
they invite timely criticism. 

It's the little things that you hide — the 
mean, tricky, selfish, secret, soul-biting, 
heart-eating, brain-draining microbe hab- 
its — which you alone know, and which 
none but you can deal with — that drag 
you down in your prime and your pride. 

Self-control is the key to the cure. 
Anybody can withstand a colossal temp- 
tation. 

True mastery lies in the battle with 
ridiculous and infinitesimal indulgences 
— none important by itself, but, like coral 
insects^ pitilessly, unflaggingly combining 
their harmful mites, until they erect a 
reef within your nature upon which op- 
portunity and hope founder and are for- 
ever lost. 



123 



ESAU, THE BEGGARMAN 



ESAU, THE BEGGARMAN 

THIS is the oldest story in the world 
— the tale of Esau, the Beggarman. 
He hungered at the threshold of 
Paradise, starved in the streets of Chal- 
dea, stole bones from the dogs of Bagdad, 
whimpered at the kitchen door of Lucul- 
lus, whined for crumbs in the House of 
Dives, and gleaned gobbets from the slop 
pails of de Guise and the Medici. 

He was at Delhi when Islam Shah 
smeared ignominy on the Rajput face. 
He saw the hordes of Ghengis Khan come 
limping back to Tartary, and Sobieski's 
pride undone and the French eagle fall 
broken-winged upon the Belgian plain. 

But all of this was in the long ago — 
in the brutal ages — in the torch-lit cen- 
turies, before schools ended the rule of 
fools and brutes and Borgias. 

Then Power fattened on men's souls and 
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NEIGHBOURS 

swung the knout, and robbed the peasant 
of his groat, and slit the purse of trade. 

But we are f reedmen — sovereign lords. 
Ours is a different creed and ours a nobler 
breed. We are children of the New 
Dawn — the People of the Light. 

We build high and fare and dare and 
do beyond the farthest limit of the ancient 
dream. Where Babel bungled, we pile 
our towers up to the clouds. 

We smite the mountains with a drill 
and streams gush forward to bear life to 
dead and sterile wastes. We do not pray 
beside the Red Sea for a miracle, but 
work our own, and move unharmed be- 
low the waters. 

We talk with men four thousand miles 
away. We estimate the distance to the 
farthest star and set the hour for the com- 
et's dash. We measure mountain heights 
upon the moon. We read the coming of 
the storm and transplant bones and eyes 
and straighten twisted spines and minds. 

These things have we done and won by 
the might of our minds and the skill of 
our hands. 

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NEIGHBOURS 

We have changed the soldier's sword 
into the surgeon's knife and made steel 
heal. 

We have ground the fabled crystal of 
the seer into a lens that tears the mask 
from every hideous plague — but the curse 
of Esau yet persists— the heritage of hun- 
ger still defies our mastery. 

The ghostly wolf pack prowls the lanes 
of poverty and howls before tenement and 
hovel. 

Daily we rise and face our splendid 
tasks; our wheels spin, our hammers 
pound; higher and higher mount our 
works. 

Then the sun signals rest. 

The derrick drops its tired head. The 
chattering song of the riveter ends. The 
chimney gives its last gasp. The city 
robes herself with flashing jewels. The 
crowds pour into playhouse and ride to 
the dance. 

One by one the lights fade, and only 
the stars are left — the same stars that 
shone at Babylon, and gleamed on Cleo- 
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NEIGHBOURS 

patra's revels — sad with olden memories 
of cruelty and want and woe. 

And in the paling dawn they blink 
down on the parks where broken things 
lie homeless on the grass — an awful fruit- 
age, under trees that rain a pitying dew 
upon the outcast brotherhood. 

Our boasted civilisation is a lie. We 
still have far to go before we have ful- 
filled our destiny on earth. We have 
learned many things, but we do not know 
mercy. We do not pay our tithe. 

This very night a hundred thousand 
beings will beg in vain for crusts and 
shelter. 

I have seen vagrants dig dinners out of 
garbage pails. I have seen a father wrap 
his coat about a little girl and use a park 
bench for a bed. I have seen gnarled 
old women snoring in damp areaways, 
and boys lie huddled on the cobblestones. 

How dare you brag of progress in the 
light of horrors such as these? 

If we are truly great, if we are super- 
men, if we can create airship, telephone, 
and printing press, if we can trail the mi- 
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NEIGHBOURS 

crobe to his death and tunnel river-beds 
— then all the more our blame and shame. 

Our past proves vv^hat v^^e can do when 
we set truly to a task. 

If one-tenth the means and time we 
have expended upon art and diversion 
were bent to the elimination of dire dis- 
tress, then crime, prostitution, and kin- 
dred evils would soon diminish. 

We can keep folks out of jails and hos- 
pitals at half the cost of maintaining them 
there. 

We do not understand philanthropy. 
Economists and experts have laid down 
scientific formulas for dispensing char- 
ity. But science is all brain and cannot 
comprehend. We must do some work 
with our hearts. 

We can well afford to postpone the 
founding of additional colleges, libraries, 
and museums. Let the next plutocrat 
who wishes to endow the nation with a 
five hundred thousand dollar painting 
translate his generosity into five million 
nourishing plates of soup. 

Let the next millionaire who offers us 

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NEIGHBOURS 

a collection of old masters erect instead a 
dormitory with a thousand free beds. 

Cold Reason protests against pauperi- 
sation and pleads justly, that so long as 
generosity extends succour, parasites will 
multiply. But while we are analysing 
and criticising and permitting theory to 
guide us, garbage cans are being turned 
into supper pails. It is far better to make 
humane mistakes than to commit cruel 
errors. 

Until we reach the millennium, we 
shall have drones and idlers, but human- 
ity must always stand ready to cast the 
life-line whenever and wherever a fellow 
creature is battling against the undertow. 



132 



JOHNNIE 



JOHNNIE 

AND now let us consider Johnnie. 
We've discussed his case before. 
Nothing new about it. He's still 
underfed, still underread, still under the 
heel of necessity. 

Besides knowing no law, necessity 
knows no pity. What else can you ex- 
pect from the daughter of Hunger? 

Personally, you've never met Hunger 
— except, perhaps, as an amateur. But 
Johnnie, who runs your errands, and car- 
ries your bundles, and rides on your deliv- 
ery wagon, is quite familiar with her hab- 
its. 

There's always a woman in the back- 
ground when a child is shoved into the 
foreground. (If the father is alive he is 
generally an invalid or a loafer — in either 
case, the woman and the boy are bur- 
dened, instead of blessed by the man.) 

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NEIGHBOURS 

You can't understand this cry of "un- 
derpaid help.'* 

Why, when you were his age, five dol- 
lars a week lodged and boarded a grown 
man, and still left enough for clothes and 
tobacco. 

But you forget that dollars stay the 
same size all the while that dollar's worth 
keeps shrinking. 

Even you can remember when your 
mother bought a competent hen for less 
than your wife can purchase a dozen of 
impeccable eggs. 

Because you were poor then, you think 
that you can put yourself in Johnnie's 
place now. 

Your breakfast seldom amounted to 
more than an egg, a rasher of bacon, and 
a cup of coffee. 

You carried your own luncheon — a few 
sandwiches, a bit of cake, an apple or two, 
and a bottle of milk. 

But look at the produce quotations this 
morning, and figure how often Johnnie's 
mother will purchase fresh eggs, and ap- 
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NEIGHBOURS 

pies, and pork, and coffee, not to mention 
the fuel to cook 'em. 

If you try hard enough, you'll recall 
sundry youthful determinations to treat 
a working boy better than your employer 
did. 

And you sincerely believe that you've 
kept that pledge, but you don't pause to 
consider that buying power alone estab- 
lishes the size of a wage. 

And the five dollars that you put into 
his pay envelope won't command nearly 
so much food and clothes as it could fur- 
nish twenty years ago. 

When Greed meets Need, the eternal 
record is blistered with divine tears. 

The hereafter is not apt to be pleasant 
for men whose business motto is "Suffer 
little children, who come unto me." 



137 



NOT AN ODE TO SPRING 



NOT AN ODE TO SPRING 

THE new year found the maple in 
despair — a gaunt, creaking, rheu- 
matic wreck, stripped to its 
battered limbs. 

Then Spring whispered courage into 
the desolate heart — again it felt the throb 
of youth and forgotten ambitions sped 
from branch to branch, harking them 
back to duty, until every twig gave an- 
swer to the call. 

The winter barrens, too, are gone, and 
in their stead are magic tapestries in 
green and rose and golden yellow. 

Here, a clump of violets shyly lifts 
above the grasses. There, a gay company 
of daisies race up the hillside, and yon- 
der, a crimson clover nods her dainty 
head to a foraging bumble-bee. 

The vagrant winds bring with them the 
fragrance of distant orchards, the pas- 
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NEIGHBOURS 

tures are lush and the roadside is hedging 
with mullein and sumac and berries in 
flower. 

(For further details, refer to the works 
of Algernon Charles Swinburne, or any 
seedsman's catalogue.) 

No, this isn't a song to spring; on the 
contrary, it's a hard-hitting, prosaic talk 
to quitters — to men who've stopped be- 
lieving in themselves, and therefore, pos- 
sibly, to you. 

All nature is trying to make you under- 
stand that you can begin again — trying 
to tell you that few losses are so utter but 
that they can be replaced — trying to teach 
you that failures are fertilisers for 
growth. 

The sapling does not bear fruit at the 
first try, but, with hope undiminished, it 
strives and strives until it fulfils its mis- 
sion. 

Are you inferior to a chestnut? Will 
you let a crab-apple cover you with 
shame? 

Society does not demand that you win 
immediately, but we do insist that you 
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NEIGHBOURS 

maintain faith so long as you have the 
strength with which to attempt. 

There is no hour so splendid as that 
which proves that you can surmount de- 
feat. 

Hardship is hurtful merely to cowards. 
It can't break a real man's back — it only 
stiffens his backbone. 

Fortune frowns on weaklings. But if 
you resist and persist, if you can "come 
back" with undiminished determination. 
Few hopes are vain. 

You are more competent with your 
misfortunes behind you than those whose 
storms and setbacks are yet before them. 

If your former place is filled, don't 
worry — there's ample room somewhere 
else. 

At the outset of their careers, most of 
the leading men in history had to be 
kicked out of their complacency and pun- 
ished for contentment with third-class 
certainties. 

Put doubt aside — aim high — and take 
a first-rate dare. 

Even if you miss the mark, you can't 

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NEIGHBOURS 

fall farther than the bottom and you're 
there already. 

Spring is not only a season — but also 
an attitude of mind — it's always the right 
moment to blossom out anew. 



^44 



